Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Fails to Wow China

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Though Rogue One: A Star Wars story has been busy dominating the box office and nabbing awards at the BAFTA film awards, the successful Star Wars spinoff has failed to wow the Chinese box office.

Ever since its big premiere last December, analystswatchedRogue One blaze across the global box office as fans hailed the film as one of the best Star Wars movies to date. The spinoff dominated the 2016 domestic box office despite running for only two and a half weeks in theaters, outdoing Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War. It also did a solid job in the international scene, crossing over the $900 million mark last week.

However, a new report by The Hollywood Reporter reveals that the film’s reception in China has held the numbers back as the film’s final leg across the globe ended with a sore addition of $31 million. Though the film raked in thrice more than the Chinese Box Office second place winner, Some Like It Hot, the film's earnings in China pulled down Rogue One’s gross haul to 39 percent less than what Star Wars: The Force Awakens made during the same weekend run back in 2015.

Though the stale numbers have been blamed on air pollution in Northern China that has forced moviegoers to stay at home, many cannot deny that the film has been facing cultural challenges in the Middle Kingdom as well.

Star Wars fans may hope that Rogue One will do better in China in the next week, however analysts doubt that the film will be able to make the additional $60 million in that it needs to move past its $1 billion goal.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is still running in theaters, telling the story of a small band of rebels tasked to steal the plans of the first Death Star.

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Tiny Diapana is a literary dilettante and warrior of the written word. She has a penchant for poetry, with some of her compositions seeing publication in anthologies. Tiny is drawn to magic realism (eg. Salman Rushdie, Etgar Kerret) and books that are stylistic and Kafkaesque. Her free time is often spent on boardgames, books, manga, comics, pop culture series, movies and practicing bass.